, only capable of being
loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for
my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!"

[Illustration: "Look thou to it! I will not lose the child!"]

"My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be
well cared for!--far better than thou canst do it!"

"God gave her into my keeping," repeated Hester Prynne, raising her
voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give her up!"--And here, by a
sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at
whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to
direct her eyes.--"Speak thou for me!" cried she. "Thou wast my
pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these
men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest,--for
thou hast sympathies which these men lack!--thou knowest what is in my
heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they
are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look
thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!"

At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne's
situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young
minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his
heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament
was thrown into agitation. He looked now more care-worn and emaciated
than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; and
whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be,
his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and
melancholy depth.

"There is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a voice
sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed, and
the hollow armor rang with it,--"truth in what Hester says, and in the
feeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too,
an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements,--both
seemingly so peculiar,--which no other mortal being can possess. And,
moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation
between this mother and this child?"

"Ay!--how is that, good Master Dimmesdale?" interrupted the Governor.
"Make that plain, I pray you!"

"It must be even so," resumed the minister. "For, if we deem it
otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator
of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of